I was called to jury duty.

But no court room was involved, since I had the pleasure of serving on a jury for the Atlanta Film Festival this year!

This is the first year the Festival is presenting the Pink Peach Award, which recognizes the best in LGBT filmmaking, and it was my duty last week to watch the nominated films and give my opinion on which one should receive this inaugural award.

It all started with Facebook.  I first became a fan of the Atlanta Film Fest, and then a member was kind enough to message me about being on the jury.  Soon after I accepted, I got a packet of the dozen films I was considering and immediately began to, well, attempt to watch them.

However, there are those moments in life when you realize you are just not up to par on technology.  Sure I recently blogged about issues regarding my cool new iTouch, but I seemed to forget in the past 10 years or so to replace my DVD player.  These movies that were recorded off a computer were unable to play on my relic of a DVD player, so I parked myself in my office chair for up close and personal viewings on my iMac.

Each dealt with different issues, some focused directly on the LGBT community, others with LGBT characters within another arena.  Some were short, some long.  Some were documentaries, others fictional.  I began to wonder how I was going to select the overall best film, since the only film criticism I had ever done was in a film class at UT *grumble* years ago.

So, I started taking notes by each title on the inventory list contained in my packet.  But the notes really became a brief description of a few words for each movie, so I would remember which title went with which story.  I eventually just allowed myself to watch each as I normally would, and simply value my naive opinions.

Still in the privacy of my small office (in what should be my dining room) I didn't feel as much a part of the festival as I did last Sunday, when the official voting took place.  We gathered on that chilly morning in Midtown, in a beautiful historic house with such great Southern scenery it was as if this mini-plantation were drowning in Dogwoods.  The group of about 20 or so people ate the brunch provided as we broke off into small groupings to select our choice for the Pink Peach Award.  The two who owned this impressive home were also filmmakers, and the house seemed to welcome our discussions as if in it's aura it too was participating. 

Can you tell I liked the house?  

Being there and talking as we were made me feel very Artsy, and reminded me of my days at Oxford Bookstore when we were all broke and dreaming of what great careers in the Arts we each would have.  (New or non-Atlanta residents will miss the reference of Oxford, but it was the café/bookstore/intellectual gathering place that came long before the chains we see today were around.)  The dressed-down approach of the filmmakers and critics this weekend was very non-pretentious and refreshing.  Spending my days currently talking about the pretty people of the world, or talking to people who wish they were pretty, can sometimes feel as if it dumbs me down. 

Of course I cannot talk about which movie was selected for the award, since that won't be announced until the end of this week, but it was interesting how some films seemed desperate to get a message heard while others seemed to be more lazy about their gay themes.  Obviously the ones with the passion of storytelling will benefit from that energy.